


entropy & growth

by archons



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Early in Canon, First Impressions, Flashbacks, Gen, Misgendering, Trans Character, Trans Fenris, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 21:43:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8417971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archons/pseuds/archons
Summary: During the fight in Danarius's manor, Fenris discovers that the Hawke he thought of as an incompetent warrior is actually a poorly disguised mage. More than that, he comes to realize they have more in common than he's comfortable with.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Repeated warning** for _misgendering_ and _usage of a deadname_. Notes on Edwin and Carver’s relationship will be at the end of the fic. I love Carver and have no intentions to mischaracterize him by having him do shitty things, etc, etc.
> 
> Also, this _may_ end up being the place where I post more Edwin x Fenris oneshots. So stay tuned!

Fear settled in Edwin Hawke’s stomach like a meal that cost a copper, twisting his guts into a sick mess and draining his face of all blood.   
  
The room was tiny when compared to the one they’d just left, warmed to sweating by a fire in the corner and filled to the brim with the remnants of Danarius’s former household. Wooden boxes outnumbered them ten to one, and with every crash and every kill, thick dust was kicked into the air only to fall like snow. Choking, smothering snow. 

”Next time someone asks you to do something,” Carver shouted as he drove the pommel of his hammer into the—surprisingly corporeal—chest of the shade he fought, “tell them no!”  
  
There was no replying.  
  
Even if Edwin had the presence of mind to form a response, he wouldn’t have had the voice. Not with another of the half dozen shades turned towards him.  
  
Fear pitched him backwards, one uneven step after another until his hip slammed into the corner of a crate. He cowered, and the shade approached. _Advanced_. Slithered on the smooth tile until he could feel the air shift around them both, stinking of burning and _wrong_.  
  
The _click_ and _spring_ of Varric’s crossbow and _woosh_ of Carver’s hammer tearing through the air was an afterthought at best. What rang clearest to him was the sound that dripped from the hole that shifted and changed from where the shade’s mouth should have been. But there was no mouth, just an undulating slit. Edwin swallowed bile.

There was a sword at his side. Its blade was sharp and tested, on mercenaries and thieves and smugglers and men from Tevinter keen on returning the elf, Fenris, to the man they considered his master. 

But demons weren’t flesh and bone.  
  
And they were only there to kill.  
  
The shade reared back, growing to near twice its original size, and became a wall of flickering black. A scream of abject horror died in Edwin’s dry throat. His hands fumbled for the sword for a moment that lasted for an age before the blade slide from its scabbard.  
  
He clutched onto the sword’s grip, and on the ground, he drew a glyph onto the tiles. The shape glowed a vibrant purple before the air rippled around them and the shade was sent sprawling on the floor.  
  
Carver whirled around to look at him. Varric lowered Bianca, his eyes wide for the moment before his expression shifted towards the impressed. And Fenris hesitated, briefly, before thrusting his blade upwards into the mouth of the shade he fought. 

Again, Carver was the only one who spoke, and his sharp, disappointed, “Winnie!” made Edwin wince.

“No need to shout, Junior. We’ve got too many of these _things_ left to—”

Fenris removed his blade from the demon in front of him only to deliver the killing blow to another, one Varric had softened up for the taking.  
  
“ — _Anyway_ , there’ll be more right around the corner. That’s how this works, right?” Varric chuckled under his breath before retrieving a few crossbow bolts from the tile once the bodies of the shades dissolved into thin air. Another few, he gathered from where they stuck out of crates or out of the walls themselves. “We’re not done here, and we need to stick together. So maybe, I dunno, less _shouting_?”

Edwin pulled himself up onto his feet, planting his hands on the crate at his side to keep steady.  
  
His heart raced, beating painfully in his ears. They were the red of embarrassment, same was his cheeks, and he avoided eye contact with any of the other men in the room once he managed to slide his sword back into its scabbard.  
  
“We’ve cleared out the other rooms.” Edwin’s voice was small in his mouth and barely loud enough to be heard over the crackling fire. His eyes darted to Fenris, then fell away just as quickly. “Where do you think he’ll be?”

“In the main hall.” Fenris spoke with confidence, as if he had known all along. Maybe he had. Maybe killing every demon in Danarius’s manor was cathartic for him. Maybe he just needed the fight. Or maybe he was guessing and felt a sort of fear, too. “The door at the very top leads into his bedroom. If he is here, that is where he’ll be.”

Carver pressed past Fenris and past Varric to make his way out into the hallway. Edwin knew the determination written on Carver’s face. It was the same he’d envied for most of his life.

Rather than struggling to emulate him, Edwin followed. Quietly.  
  
The lingering stench of the trap they’d sprung before had begun to leak into the hallways that branched from the main chamber. Diluted, but still pungent, Edwin’s stomach turned more and more with every half-breath.  
  
Varric muttered something about being closer to the stuff than anyone else before coughing into his sleeve. Carver muttered for him to stop complaining. Fenris kept up.

Quietly.

The main chamber boasted grand architecture, once-beautiful carpets and tapestries, and a mess of bodies and dust both natural and preternatural.  
  
Carver coughed out a mouthful of the disgusting air as he made his way up the stairs two at a time. “She would’ve caught a scent. Do you even know if he’s here? Or are you actually leading us on a wild goose chase?”

“This is no chase,” Fenriis murmured. “Or, rather, this is the end of one.”  
  
Behind them, Edwin and Varric took the stairs together.  
  
“We’ve been working together for a few weeks, Hawke, and you’ve already dragged me through some weird shit.”  
  
“I haven’t—” Edwin began.  
  
Varric’s brows shot up.  
  
Voice softening to a whisper, Edwin amended his statement. “I haven’t _dragged_ you.” 

“But there’s no denying, you’ve brought me along for some—”  
  
Carver turning the handle of Danarius’s bedroom door quieted the dwarf, but it was something else that left him drawing Bianca and arming her as quickly as he could manage. Edwin spun on his feet to see what had gotten Varric’s attention only to have the breath stolen from his lungs.    
  
The creature was taller than everyone there by almost half. Tattered robes hung from limbs thinned by death. The faded red fabric was accented by chains of gold that clinked as its hands lifted from its sides to begin casting a spell.  
  
It formed a great ball of fire by gesturing rather than an incantation, given the way its lips peeled back from its yellowed teeth. Edwin darted out of the way just in time, around the corner and down onto the floor in sheer terror. Flames licked at the baluster, curling around the stone before catching on the wooden railing.  
  
He crawled away rather than toward the creature. At least, those were his plans until he heard Varric cry out in pain.   
  
Edwin turned on his knees just in time to see him fall to his own.  
  
The creature shifted its attention towards Fenris and Carver when he heard the latter cry out: “See to Varric!” before rushing forward.  
  
Varric was halfway out of his singed duster by the time Edwin reached him, and he shot a grateful—if uneven—smile at him. He had enough strength to scramble to the side with his would-be savior, nursing a quickly spreading black wound that wound up from his wrist.  
  
“Weird,” Varric coughed. “Shit,” he coughed again.   
  
“Entropic magic,” Edwin whispered to himself, for himself. “Entropic magic...”  
  
His brow knitted as he struggled to remember his father’s lessons on the various schools. A simple healing spell could negate the damage done by a primal mage, but entropy. _Entropy_. His fingers brushed over the origin point of the wound, and he squeezed his eyes shut to block out the combat surrounding them.

* * *

  
_”Why’re you teaching her this?” Carver’s voice, freshly broken, lifted to a whine at the end of his question._  “ _She’s never gonna use it.”_  
  
_Malcolm Hawke straightened his back and turned towards his son with the keen-edged look of a professor rather than a father._  
  
_“Bethany needs to understand how to counteract any magic she comes across. If she understands the limits of her abilities, she will be able to respect her power even more than she’s capable of now.”_  
  
_Beth tucked her hands under her thighs, shoes swishing through the straw beneath them as she sat and waited for Malcolm to continue her lessons._

_And, in the corner, Edwin sat, studying. Listening. Learning._

_“Balance is maintained between the schools of magic by a series of specific weaknesses. Ice can be melted. Lightning can be stemmed. Hurtling rock can be diverted. And entropic magic is taken apart by...”  
_

_“Growth,” Edwin whispered, his fingertips brushing over the stem of an elfroot plant, shoddily drawn on the vellum pages of his journal._

* * *

 

Fenris glanced towards them both—Varric, sweat beading on his pain-furrowed brow, and Edwin, fingers glowing blue against the dwarf’s thick wrist. The distraction led to him being struck by a shining missile from the sickly long-fingered hand of the demon-mage.  
  
The impact lifted him from his feet and slammed him into Carver, nearly knocking them both onto their backs.  
  
But Carver stood his ground, rooting himself into the tile to give Fenris ample opportunity to end up right back on his feet again. Which he did, though he was out of breath when his heels touched the tile and his eyes were wide enough to show little but the white of his sclera.

“Can you still shoot?” Edwin asked Varric, who kept glancing back at the fight, visibly angered by his helplessness. “Grab Bianca. You can shoot her while I work, can’t you?”  
  
“I could shoot her in my _sleep_ , Sprout.”

A smile shot across Edwin’s face. “Then, shoot it, will you? In its terrible face?”

 _Growth_.   
  
Growth was the key to the lesson. White-blue healing magic curled up Varric’s arm like vines following the festering branches of entropic magic that threatened to turn his flesh to stone. He poured every ounce of focus left inside of him into his spell, and as he did, the light grew and grew. Before long, it was blinding.  
  
Every few moments, Varric’s entire body shuddered with the power of Bianca discharging. And with every bolt buried into the creatures skin and bones, it howled wordlessly. With every slice of Fenris’s sword or every bludgeoning hit of Carver’s hammer, it cried out, chilling the air around them.  
  
But when the healing spell melted away, diffused into the air around them, the wound was healed. Only redness was left behind, an infection that could be cured with a potion or two.

Varric’s arm was mended. The creature was dying. Dead, with another swing of Carver’s hammer. And Fenris bolted for the door, greatsword at the ready, primed to deliver the magister every pain he deserved.  
  
The elf stopped in the doorway. His shoulders sagged, and his hands twisted impotently around the grip of his weapon.  
  
“Loot the room,” he said, back still turned to the others. “Danarius isn’t here.”

Carver spat onto the crumpled form of the mage-demon. “So we did all of this for you... and he isn’t even here?”

“No.” Fenris’s voice was firm. “He isn’t.”

The two warriors met in the middle of the landing, one with a greatsword and one with a hammer, one frowning and one blank-faced. Something about the absence of anger on Fenris’s face pushed Carver a step back, giving him room enough to leave if that was what he wanted. Which it was.  
  
“I need some air,” he said. “Meet me outside once you’re... finished.”  
  
Edwin scrambled to his feet. He went to Carver’s side, reaching out to give his shoulder a touch just heavy enough to get his attention. “We should follow him.” His brows pinched upwards, hoping for a sliver of understanding. “I doubt there’s anything here worth your time.”

Carver glanced over his shoulder to find that Fenris wasn’t simply out of earshot. He was nowhere to be seen.

“We have to follow him,” Edwin pressed. “He’s a good fighter.”  
  
“I’m a good fighter.”  
  
“You are! But...”  
  
“But I can’t put my fist through someone’s chest,” Carver finished with a roll of his eyes. “I guess you have a point.”

The three made their way through the abandoned manor much more quickly than they managed on the way in, having been stopped at every corner by demons and men alike. All in the employ of this mysterious Tevinter magister, the man who scarred Fenris’s skin with lyrium, the man whose abuses sent the man running south with such desperation.

Edwin was the first out of the door in Fenris’s wake. He curled his fingers anxiously around his braid, orange and disheveled on his shoulder. Carver and Varric followed closely behind. 

Neither of them missed a word of what Fenris said.

“I did everything I could to escape Tevinter, only to have Danarius’s hounds snapping at my heels... even here.” Fenris pushed away from the vine-covered wall, fingers brushing absently over the leaves. He drew his arms up and folded them over his chest. “I left a land tainted by magic and hoped to find one where the threat of magic was... lessened.”

Edwin swallowed. Hard. 

“And yet, here I am,” Fenris drawled. The edge in his voice was gone, having been replaced by a subdued sort of frustration. “... in the company of another mage.”

“She’s—she’s not a _mage_ ,” Carver spat angrily, but the truth was in his stammering. He clung to a threadbare lie, like he always had. Like mother and father had. “What she used was a trap, elf, nothing more!” 

Edwin cringed.  
  
Blood fled from his knuckles, grip tightening around his own fingers until both hands ached. The shouting bothered him more than anything else. He was used to _she_., but Carver’s voice bellowed when he was in this sort of mood. And Edwin was tired, overwhelmed and overstimulated.  
  
“It’s alright, brother.” An unsteady step forward brought them shoulder to shoulder, standing before Fenris with the truth bared. Finally. “He was bound to find out eventually.”  
  
“If you have a problem with Winnie being a mage...” 

Carver tilted into his threat, but Fenris stopped him halfway.

“I only want to know what sort of mage...” He stopped, lingering over the moment where another _she_ would have driven Edwin farther down into his self-hatred. “... wields a blade.”  
  
Edwin’s lips parted. It was Carver who spoke.  
  
“It keeps her out of the Gallows.”  
  
The glimmer of the hope that came with understanding blinked out of existence as quickly as it’d been kindled. “I...” He stopped, clearing his throat, looking to Carver and then to Fenris. “I know more about swords than I do about offensive magic.”

Fenris accepted that answer with a nod, though there was a frown written into the lines on his face that Edwin didn’t quite understand. 

Was the tension there his fault? 

Had he said or done something beyond _existing_ to make him so uncomfortable?

”I will follow you,” Fenris told them, his sudden willingness a surprise to all three. “Against my better judgment, I will follow you. If you have need of me, you know where I’ll be.” He looked to the sturdy door behind them, beautifully carved from dark wood, and let go of a resigned sigh. “If you’ll excuse me...” 

The elf nodded towards Edwin before slipping between him and Carver without so much as grazing either of them. “I have the rest of the night ahead of me.”  
  
Before anyone could stop him to ask him if he’d need help, the door to Danarius’s manor was closed. And locked.

**Author's Note:**

> So, on the subject of Carver’s constant misgendering of Edwin: it’s a behavior that was encouraged by both Malcolm and (to a lesser extent) Leandra. When Edwin came out to them as a boy of ten, when Carver and Bethany were nearly eight, they reacted poorly. Quickly tried to cover everything up. Reinforced Winnie. Reinforced daughter.
> 
> Edwin is an incredibly non-confrontational person. He let it happen. He grew his hair out. He wore the dresses his mother bought him. He answered to Winnie and sweetheart and darling. He smiled when their neighbors in Lothering said he was such a sweet girl. It was constant and violent in the worst sort of ways, but he accepted it. 
> 
> He doesn’t blame Carver for how he acts. He doubts that Carver even remembers the day when he told their parents that he wanted to be called Edwin. There is no anger there, no hate. He loves his brother. And his brother loves and is protective of him.
> 
> Only much later, after he enters into a relationship with Fenris (who I headcanon as also being trans) and loses his family, does he really learn how to be himself again.


End file.
